In Linguistics, a '''register''' language is a language which combines tone and vowel Phonation into a single phonological system. Burmese and the Chinese dialect Shanghainese are examples. Burmese is usually considered a tonal language, but differences in relative pitch are correlated with vowel phonation, so that neither exists independently.
There are three or four vowel registers in Burmese. They are:
{|
!Register!!Phonation!!Length!!Pitch
|-
|'''Low'''||Modal voice||medium||low
|-
|'''High'''||Breathy_voice||long||high
|-
|'''Creaky'''||Creaky_voice||medium||high
|-
|'''Checked'''||Final Glottal_stop||short||(varies)
|}
Even if the last is considered to have a final consonant rather than a vowel register, the other three are distinguished by both pitch and phonation together rather than independently.
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